Croakey

British American Tobacco report: more holes than a sieve

Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, has been taking a close look at a new report, prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers for British American Tobacco, and has found it has more holes than a slab of Swiss cheese (or whichever metaphor you prefer).

He has given the report a big, fat F.

Chapman writes:

“Australia’s tobacco industry is having a major attack of the vapours following recommendations made by the government’s Preventive Health Task Force last year. Its chief concerns are with a proposal to push the price of a pack of cigarettes to $20 in two tax increases, bringing us into line with UK and Irish prices, but still around $3 behind Norway.

The other would see local industry internationally humiliated as being the first anywhere in the world to have to sell cigarettes in plain boxes with only the brand name to differentiate the products. Just like prescribed drugs have always been packaged. Local management don’t want that blight on their CVs.

The bogeyman of a booming black market in tobacco is the frontline of its attack on the tax rise. British American Tobacco has got out of the blocks in 2010 last Friday releasing a commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers report on the use of illegal, tax-avoiding tobacco. I will be setting the report this year as an exercise in critical appraisal for my public health students. It is quite something.

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The monster snow storm: here are some pictures from Washington

As you may have heard, a huge blizzard – which some are calling “snowmageddon” – has struck the east coast of the US.

Croakey’s North American correspondent, Dr Lesley Russell, has filed this report from Washington (who needs words when you’ve got pictures like these):

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My Drug Policy – so much more useful than Your School

What has Julia Gillard unleashed? The MySchool website is provoking some lateral suggestions that extend well beyond the education portfolio. One Croakey reader, responding to Gavin Mooney’s recent piece on MyHospital, suggested that we need someone to set up MyMP, to monitor our elected representatives’ productivity.

Now Dr Alex Wodak, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, has taken the notion of public reporting a step further. What difference might it make, he wonders, if governments had to account for their drug policies through a website, My Drug Policy?

He reports from the website’s “launch”:

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What do vaccine sceptics have in common with climate change deniers?

Climate change deniers and vaccine sceptics present policy makers with complex challenges. In the wake of the recent adverse finding against one of the “poster boys of the global anti vaccination movement”, Dr Andrew Wakefield, there may be some lessons for those advocating for effective climate change policies.

So argues Dr Julie Leask, a social scientist in the medical faculty at the University of Sydney, who has done much research and thinking on the issues around public acceptance, or otherwise, of vaccination. She writes:

“The climate change issue could learn a lot from immunisation debates. In both there is a pressing need for action to prevent human suffering; a minority element attempting to stymie progress; and a scientific community looking on in dismay offering well intended fact-for-fact rebuttals that are more likely to entrench existing positions because they are along ideological/world views.

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Will the iPad make you a better clinician?

Have just come across a series of posts on the health implications of the iPad and related technology that may be of interest to the technology buffs and early adapters among you.

What iPad will mean for doctors and hospitals

…and for patients

The IPod touch and medical apps

Implications for the doctor patient relationship

Have you come across anything similar? If so, feel free to post the links in the comments section. Thanks

Why the salt is hitting the fan…

As the salt wars heat up around the world, those campaigning for a healthier food supply may find some useful lessons in previous public health campaigns, according to public health policy consultant Margo Saunders. She writes:

“First it was smoking, then it was passive smoking, then it was junk food advertising, then it was trans-fats, and now it’s salt – no, not the latest campaigns of Mayor Bloomberg, but public health initiatives that attract eerily similar anti-public health arguments from vested economic interests..

Salt, it seems, is the latest battleground, with the (US) Salt Institute on one side and just about the entire health and medical community on the other.  The latest salvos were fired in two of the most august medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

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What does Jim Bishop have to say about swine flu?

What will be the impact of the H1N1 pandemic upon public trust in health authorities and campaigns?

This is just one of many questions surrounding the pandemic and the public health response. You can read plenty more about related issues in this article, which has just been published by Inside Story.

Last Friday (January 29), I interviewed the Federal Department of Health and Ageing’s Chief Medical Officer,  Professor Jim Bishop, as part of research for the article. I thought Croakey readers might be interested to see what he had to say about issues ranging from disease-mongering to vaccination of children, and the role of politics in public health policy.  The edited transcript follows:

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Forget about MySchool, what about MyHospital.com.au?

Never mind this website comparing schools. Health economist Gavin Mooney has been toying with some ideas for other useful new websites. He writes:

My Hospital enables you to search the profiles of Australian hospitals. My Hospital is a government backed information service provided by an independent authority with functions including the publishing of nationally comparable data on all Australian hospitals. This responsibility is derived from the Hospitals Act and through the decisions of the Ministerial Council for Health.

The information on this site has been provided by individual hospitals and health authorities.

The performance of hospitals is greatly affected by a range of patient intake and hospital location characteristics. When comparing hospitals, it is important to compare like with like. The My Hospital website allows and encourages comparisons with hospitals that are statistically similar in terms of a range of factors known to affect clinical performance.

This site is thus aimed at assisting patients to choose between hospitals. It uses an index of disadvantage to reflect social determinants of health. This allows people who are poor to compare themselves in terms of their health and their hospitals with other people who are poor. Similarly, rich people can compare themselves with rich people.

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Lessons from the US in improving hospital safety

Croakey’s correspondent on all matters North American, Dr Lesley Russell, has a report below on some initiatives aimed at improving patient safety in the US that may have some useful pointers for us.

On related issues, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the growing use in the US of risk calculators, to help assess surgery patients’ risk of complications, based on a patient’s personal medical history, condition and the known risks of the procedure.  Apparently, heart surgeons have been using risk calculators for several years and they are now being developed for other surgical specialties. Is this happening in Oz, I wonder?

Meanwhile, Lesley Russell reports:

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Should the health sector be on Twitter?

Should health services, departments, organisations and other players in the health sector be on Twitter?

It’s a no brainer, I reckon. I was a late convert but am now a fully-fledged evangelist. Twitter has greatly enhanced my access to interesting and useful content from a variety of sources. It’s a very handy aggregator and disseminator. Croakey’s reach is slowly expanding thanks in large part to Twitter.

I imagine Twitter will also yield plenty of interesting research papers down the track, eg its impact on health behaviours and knowledge, media coverage, and health practice, policy and political process ETC. I’d love to see an audit of key Twitterers in the health sector, for example. Who are they – commercial, public health, government, individual service providers, etc?

But how to do it? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a short guide for its staff, explaining Twitter, how it works, and how staff may use it. It also stresses the importance of evaluating the use of Twitter in public health campaigns etc.

You can download the guide from this NPR blog about it, here.

On related topics:

• Twitter’s Top 50 Suggested Sources in Health

• For those with an interest in media reporting of health and science, and, on a similar theme, a toolkit to help journalists

• Some reflections on health journalism by Gary Schwitzer of the Health News Review blog